Over the Transom

Last year I was talking to a literary agent and friend about the dire manuscripts I am sometimes asked to read by neighbors, troubled youths, swains of hairdressers, and the man in the dark trench coat who stands at the back of the room at every book-signing, and then thrusts a grimy manuscript into your hands whose first paragraph describes the ritual dismemberment of someone on Friends. I told my friend that I had to handle situations like this about twice a year, and that it was the part of my job I most dreaded, because I never looked at a manuscript without warning the fledgling author that I would tell him exactly what I thought of it—and then, if necessary, alert the forensic pathologists at Quantico. 

Photo credit: istock

This straightforward approach always, always ends badly: You are never forgiven for lording it over the hapless amateur, even though you yourself never tried to sneak into the publishing world this way when you were young and unpublished. Nor did you ever ask anyone to read a novel about a doomed interracial romance between star-crossed ghosts, or a retelling of the Iliad with Beantown mafiosi as the principals. But on the few occasions when I have deviated from my principles, and encouraged the resolutely giftless, they soon turned up with yet another abysmal manuscript. And then I had to let them have both barrels right between the eyes. 

My friend had little sympathy for my plight. A big part of her job was to sift through dozens of idiotic query letters pitching books every day, seeking the proverbial needle in a very unappetizing haystack. That afternoon she began sending me the worst query letter she received each day. Eventually she simply sent me the first one she read each morning, because they were equally imbecilic, so singling one out as the very worst seemed pedantic.